


Sentinel

by Siarven



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Bad Ending (for the characters), Bittersweet Ending (for the story), Blood, Body Horror, Dark, Dehumanization, Eye Trauma, Gen, Horror, Jonah gets too many eyes too bc i do what I want, Kind of a prediction fic but not really?, Knife/stabbing, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Plant-based body horror, S5 spoilers, Self-Sacrifice, Surreal, Too many eyes, Transformation, Whump, and ive been told it's faintly fairytale-esque soo... yay? :D, as a treat, despite all the mean it still manages to be vaguely hopepunk, it was just supposed to be body horror but then it grew a plot, so now it's mostly plot with a little body horror, use of it/its pronoun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:53:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25846909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siarven/pseuds/Siarven
Summary: When they reach the Panopticon, the world is eerily quiet, and the Institute is gone.The tower rises into the sky like a bad omen, a wicked witch’s finger, crooked and strangelyorganicin a way that makes Jon shiver. Its rock is dark with impossible age, tainted by grime and ashes and some unfamiliar, black substance that seeps out along a series of regular cracks. Jon wonders if they were windows once.Or:After he’s lost everyone, Jon saves the world.
Relationships: minor Jon/Martin - Relationship
Comments: 39
Kudos: 95





	Sentinel

**Author's Note:**

> :3 _trees_
> 
> My unending gratitude goes to my dear friend and enabler [Soren](https://www.instagram.com/papershield.art/) for supporting my terribly mean ideas, cackling/crying with me while I wrote it, and then reading it once it was finished <333 It isn't beta-edited though, all mistakes are my own. Please heed the tags! This one is very mean :D

_In the end, everything has changed._

👁️👁️👁️

When they reach the Panopticon, the world is eerily quiet, and the Institute is gone.

The tower rises into the sky like a bad omen, a wicked witch’s finger, crooked and strangely _organic_ in a way that makes Jon shiver. Its rock is dark with impossible age, tainted by grime and ashes and some unfamiliar, black substance that seeps out along a series of regular cracks. Jon wonders if they were windows once.

The Institute at its base looks as though it got liquefied, as though the Panopticon tower rose by drawing it into itself, using its material to push itself higher and higher into the foreboding, watching sky. The Institute’s last remains are twisted and bunched up around the base of the tower, the ground around it cracked and dry.

The longer Jon looks at it, the more he can make out familiar forms in the warped stone, until he’s sure that they’re animals and people staring back with wide-eyed expressions, their eternal screams forever unheard. He is reminded of an optical illusion: everything he isn’t focusing on seems to move and shift, but as soon as his gaze snaps to a new point of focus, all of its movement stops.

It makes him shiver.

The figures are right on the threshold between being too abstracted to be anything more than strange formations in the rock, while at the same time being too realistic to be anything less than real.

It’s especially uncanny because he’s sure that they’re watching him back, blinking when his eyes aren’t focused on them; that the spaces in between them must be filled with eyes, too, even if he can’t be sure.

The only parts that still look the way Jon remembers them are the pillared entrance area and the wide staircase leading up to it. The untouched quality of it manages to make everything ten times _worse;_ even the glass doors are still intact, pristine as though someone regularly comes by to wipe them clean.

They’ll have to go through that to get to—to _Jonah._

“Jon? Should we... I-I don’t even know.” Martin’s voice shakes a bit. “D-Do we just go in? Do we wait for him to c-come out? Is he, ah, is he even—here?”

His voice feels impossibly far away.

“I don’t know.” Jon hears himself say, equally distant.

The Panopticon shouldn’t be this high.

The glass shouldn’t be that clean.

Rock shouldn’t look like that, either.

Jon and Martin stare, frozen to the spot.

Everything behind that entrance area is so obviously and _pointedly_ sinister that Jon would probably have laughed if he’d seen it in a movie. The combination of twisted, organic rock and unblemished glass should look ridiculous, but somehow, it doesn’t. He can _feel_ that this is it. Can _feel_ his connection, tugging and pulling him inexorably toward this new centre of the world, ceaselessly watching until nothing remains.

(He shivers when his thoughts skitter to the Web, and pointedly turns his mind away.)

For the first time in ages, none of his questions get Answered, and Jon hates how much it unsettles him.

Hates how much he dislikes _not knowing_ something, how long it’s been since that last happened.

_Blind spot._

“I—I guess this is it.”

_This is how it ends._

“Yeah,” Martin replies quietly. Suddenly his voice is measured, and there’s an obvious edge to it.

Jon turns to look at him, and for a few moments they simply study each other. There’s steel in Martin’s gaze, but it melts away when his eyes find Jon’s, leaving nothing but a gentle fondness that makes Jon’s heart ache. It’s a good ache, a _promise,_ really, and Jon knows that, whatever happens, they’ll still have each other. (Hopes, prays, begs. He isn’t sure what he’s praying to, though. Certainly not the Eye.)

“It—it’ll be fine, Jon,” Martin says when neither of them moves. His voice sounds uneasy and Jon sees the tension in his pose, in the set of his shoulders, in the tightness around his eyes. And yet: “You—we can do this. It’ll be fine.”

Jon nods, and they both know that he's doing it for Martin. “Let’s go,” he makes himself reply, forcing his legs into compliance.

_Just one step after another._

_It'_ _ll be fine._

It’ll be fine.

* * *

The entrance area looks the way it always has, but that’s about it. The large hall has shrunken and what remains is more akin to a gloomy, half-molten cave. Rosie’s reception desk is gone entirely, replaced by a dark pool of _something_ that Martin and Jon carefully circle around, toward a domineering spiral staircase that climbs higher and higher into the sky. There are room and corridors branching off from the stairs, hidden behind ostentatious doors. Sometimes they’re open, letting Jon glimpse unsettlingly casual rooms with fires burning in hearths and wine bottles placed on elegant tables next to invitingly half-filled glasses, condensation beading on the dark green glass of the bottles. Sometimes there are simple bedrooms, or libraries, or bathrooms. (Jon only feels a bone-deep fury over their seemingly innocuous appeal.)

It doesn’t take Jon and Martin long to realise that the dimensions of the tower don’t add up; that there’s far more behind the doors than there should be. That the rooms seem to repeat at a disquieting interval, which both Jon and Martin pointedly refuse to address. They only acknowledge it by drawing closer, and after a while, Jon grabs Martin’s hand. When Martin squeezes it gently they smile at each other before continuing their climb.

The rest of the Panopticon is _wrong_ on such a fundamental level that Jon is hard-pressed to decide where to start describing it.

There are thick carpets covering the steps and the railing is made of dark wood, but sometimes it warps and twists, pieces branching off and reconnecting further up.

The walls look like stone, except where they don’t; sometimes, Jon feels _watched_ even though he can’t spot the eyes.

After a while, there are portraits lining the walls, cycling through the various Heads of the Institute. Of course, their eyes remain the same.

The longer Jon and Martin climb, the more the portraits change.

“Are they—are they watching us?” Martin whispers.

“Yes,” says Jon, and swallows. He should feel better, now that he can _see_ Jonah watching, but he doesn’t.

The higher they climb, the more the portraits begin to approximate each other, until they all depict the same man in different poses.

Jonah Magnus smirks down at them from the walls, and Jon knows that he sees them coming, and that he isn’t worried.

* * *

At one point, Jon stumbles over a weird growth on one of the steps, and only doesn't fall because Martin catches him. He looks down at it with furrowed eyebrows but the carpet conceals it; he only spots a weird, longish bump, maybe as long as his lower arm.

“What _is_ that?” Martin asks but Jon can only frown and shrug.

“So y-you’re… back to _not_ knowing?” Martin asks, almost hopeful.

Jon sighs. “The Eye can’t turn its Gaze upon itself,” he replies.

Martin’s face falls, and he stays quiet after that.

* * *

A few steps further up, there’s a hole in the carpet, and something peeks through. Jon recognises it for the same thing as the bump he almost fell over; it’s long, almost two meters, its tip wrapping around one of the bars holding up the railing.

The thing is rough-hewn and scorched at the bottom, appearing to all intents and purposes like the rock the Institute was constructed from, warped like the exterior of the Panopticon. A bit further along its structure changes, its outer parts becoming more crystalline in structure and transparency, with a solid, dark core remaining underneath. There’s a gradient toward its long, thin tip—as though the crystal structure gets shed, revealing a root-like, half-translucent tendril that’s a reddish-brown at the centre.

Martin pulls Jon away after a while, and Jon is grateful. He knows that he would've stared a lot longer if Martin hadn't.

* * *

After that, there are more tendril-roots like that; some staying mostly hidden, some snaking along the walls, up the railing.

At some point, the rich carpet and golden-framed portraits start to fall more and more into disrepair until they are gone entirely; either half-obscured beneath root-tendrils or lying destroyed upon the ground. At some point, the doors to the sides are all shut.

Jon and Martin do their best to ignore these changes and their implications, to just step over the roots and ignore that the ground gets more and more uneven the further up they climb.

That the tower seems to breathe with their steps.

That there are dark nooks and cracks burrowing deeper into the walls; that their steps are muffled and the air moist and cool.

Still, their entwined hands are clammy and their grips so tight that their fingers feel bloodless and numb.

The pain keeps Jon grounded, and the contact is the only thing keeping him from screaming.

“Spiderwebs,” Martin whispers some time later, and Jon just nods. Spiders aren’t the only ones who’ve made their home here.

There are fewer and fewer doors to the sides, too, and then they stop entirely.

At one point, Jon starts wondering what they’ll find when they reach the top.

Whether they’ll find anything at all.

* * *

“I—expected something…different,” Jon says an eternity later.

Martin stops beside him and together they look up. There’s a smaller, rickety staircase leading toward a trapdoor, or rather: A hole where a trapdoor once was. Two boards still hang down from rusted hinges but the rest lies splintered upon the floor, a few feet from where they’re standing.

The root-like structures all go upward, into the ceiling or through the hole.

The staircase is gnarled, warped wood, and Jon swallows.

“You should turn back,” he says, “I don’t want you—whatever happens—I _can_ _’t_ let you get hurt…”

Martin shakes his head. “I won’t let you face him alone,” he says steadily. They can both hear his voice shake, but they also both know that it doesn’t matter. “Whatever’s up there—I won’t let you face him alone.”

And for one last time, they embrace, and if Jon’s eyes are wet when they finally pull apart, then that’s okay, too. 

* * *

Jon doesn’t know what to expect when he pulls himself through the hole. The space in front of him is far bigger than it has any right to be, the walls and outer edges of the ceiling made from crystal-carved, faceted glass. He’s off to the side, almost near one of the windows.

In the middle stands a throne, massive and sprawling and black, growing from the ground like a fungus, like a _cancer._

Roots cross the entire room, converging upon the throne and its occupant, hanging off the ceiling where it isn’t transparent.

Jonah Magnus looks up when Jon pushes himself to his feet, ignoring his painfully thudding heart. There’s something _off_ about Jonah, about his, or rather, _Elias'_ face and the way he’s holding himself, about the thousands of roots and tendrils and vine-like strands pooling around the throne, some of them interwoven with it and themselves.

Converging upon him.

When Jonah moves to look at him, they shift as well, and Jon suddenly _knows_ that there’s a reason why nobody _talked_ about Jonah; why he hasn’t left the tower. Why he’s sitting here, on top of the world, waiting.

It’s because he can’t leave, because he’s become One with the Eye and the Panopticon and the Institute, tethering the entire world.

“Hello Jon,” Jonah says, lips stretching into a wide smile. His eyes are glazed and feverish, and when he blinks, another hundred eyes open along his face and neck and hands, all of them shining in unnamed hues and iridescent madness. The moment Jon meets his Gaze, his mind is flayed open, Knowledge infused into his very soul, grafted onto him as though he were a plant. Before, he Knew everything, felt all the suffering intimately, but he still had control over his thoughts, could (at least somewhat successfully) banish it all to the back of his mind. Now it feels like he’s being ripped apart, as though his skin were being torn from his body, like there’s a burning fire inside his chest that devours and tears and screams.

“And so my Archive finds its way home,” Jonah croons, and Jon just _stands there_ , barely cognisant of the words over the screaming in his head, the screams coming out of his mouth. “Come here…” Jonah holds up his hand and makes a beckoning gesture. Jon finds himself crossing the room in a daze.

When he’s halfway there, there’s a voice shouting his name. “Jon?—Jon!” For a moment Jon doesn’t recognise it; it’s a struggle to even remember his own name amids the painful thudding ache in his mind, but then the voice calls him again, and this time something clicks. He almost weeps with relief when Martin touches his shoulder, wrapping his arms around him, and inadvertently breaks the eye contact between Jon and Jonah.

The Knowing doesn’t cut off, but it abates, letting Jon breathe again. He sags into Martin’s arms and takes a shaky breath.

There’s a knife in Martin’s hands, and its handle presses into his back.

“I see you brought your, how do you say… your _Anchor,_ _”_ Jonah says from his throne, and Jon can _hear_ his sneering grin. “Jon, really?” It’s the first time he’s said his name.

Jon isn’t sure whether to feel _more_ disgusted or not, and refuses to rise to the bait or to look at him again.

Jonah laughs. “Quite. I must say, I’m disappointed. I expected more from you.”

There’s a wispy rustling followed by a faint gasp from Martin, and then the roots Jon stands on begin to twitch. He feels something shift beneath his feet, watches as one of them uncurls, gently strokes his calf. He shoves himself and Martin away from it, looks up nervously toward the throne with anticipation and dread curdling in his stomach, careful not to focus on Jonah's eyes.

Jonah is halfway down the steps already, moving at a leisurely, calm pace. The growths are shifting behind him like a gargantuan veil, or a cloak, or maybe both at once. Thin, translucent tendrils extend from the back of his head, from his neck and spine and back, from his arms up to the elbows. They become thicker and gnarlier and less translucent the closer they get to the centre of his back; the ones in the middle almost look like branches.

 _The Heart of the Institute_ , Jon thinks, and a bitter laugh steals itself from his lips. “Was it worth it, _Elias?”_

Jonah’s lips twist into something ugly, halfway between a cruel smile and a savage sneer.

His deafening silence is answer enough, but it doesn’t last very long.

“You don’t need that anymore, do you?” Jonah says casually, and then the tendril whips out from below, plucking the knife from Martin’s fingers, and Jon watches in mute horror as the tendril buries it in Martin’s chest in a single, fluid motion.

In the infinite, hollow moment that follows, Martin stares down at himself, face colourless and stricken. No pain yet. He raises his eyes and looks at Jon.

Then his knees buckle beneath him.

* * *

_In the end, there_ _’s a knife._

_In the end, his hands are stained red._

_In the end, Jon faces Jonah alone._

* * *

“It—it’ll be okay, Jon—” Martin chokes out, gasping and shivering in his arms, and Jon’s hands are so red, his clothes sticky and crusted with—

Jon swallows harshly, holding onto him tightly, and he doesn’t care that Jonah is standing right in front of them now, lips curled into that sickly cold grin. The exposed part of the knife is slick with blood, and it glints in the compounded light shining through the fractal window. Jon itches to pull it out but doesn’t.

“Really, Jon, shouldn’t you have seen this coming?” Jonah asks conversationally, and his voice is so far away that Jon almost doesn’t heart it through the foggy static in his head.

“You should’ve come alone, and maybe he could’ve, ah, _lived._ ” There’s something dark and ugly in Jonah’s gaze, something splintered and twisted beyond repair, and it glints in time with the knife. He sneers. “Now, if you're quite ready, we do have t—”

“ _ **Silence,”**_ Jon hisses, and can _feel_ the power unfurling behind his breastbone even if he didn’t mean to use it.

He feels empty, as though his soul is draining away with Martin’s blood.

Jonah stops in his tracks as the roots freeze him in place, his mouth working noiselessly.

Jon clutches Martin to his chest, and weeps.

* * *

When Martin breathes out for the last time, it's followed by a beat of silence.

Jonah looks down at Jon from where he’s standing, awful delight burning fervently in his eyes. Jon numbly stares back at him first, and then down at his hands dripping with red, _red,_ _**red**_ _ **—** _

And then Jon _breaks._

One moment he’s kneeling on the ground, the next he's standing, and there’s that knife in his hand, and it’s sticky and red with Martin’s blood. Jon tastes bile and swallows harshly, trying to blink away tears of rage. The ground is roiling beneath him but he knows that it will hold; Jonah might control parts of it, but he’s just as much controlled himself.

And they both know.

He clutches the knife so tightly that his knuckles stand out in stark relief, doing his best not to look Jonah in the (main) eyes directly, and then he screams, and attacks. He's never tried to attack anyone before, has never had a reason to nor been the brave type, but it’s not like any of that still matters.

When Jon reaches Jonah, it all happens at once.

Jonah steps away to the side, kicking his right leg out from under him with casual cruelty. Jon tries to twist away but fails, sees the ground rush up to meet him, pain lancing through his leg. When he instinctively raises his hands to block the fall, he’s just barely aware enough to throw the knife away as not to impale himself on accident.

He hears it clatter uselessly against the ground, and is too tired to care before the crash knocks the air out of his lungs, and for a moment, he just _hurts._

“Really, Jon?” Jonah leers, but Jon doesn’t reply. His eyes find the knife but it’s too far away. He grinds his teeth, pushes himself back to his feet, and rushes Jonah without hesitating, tackles him head-first tackles to the ground.

This time Jonah doesn’t manage to evade him.

They crash painfully, Jon rolling off to the side, touching one of the tendrils by accident in the progress. He feels something like white-hot electricity spasming down his finger and arm and the texture of the thing makes him shudder with repulsion. He twists around, throwing himself back toward Jonah who's still on the ground; claws for his face, and somehow managing to stab one finger inside his right ear.

Jonah screams, but there’s a mad quality to the sound, and he manages to free himself before Jon does any serious damage, rolls away two arm-lengths.

“Really, Archive dear?” Jonah taunts, panting, “did you really think that—”

“Shut up,” Jon growls, pushing himself back up on his knees, and for some reason there's something hard beneath his right leg. When he shifts his pose and looks down, he finds the knife, still sticky with Martin's blood, and watches as a gap between the roots closes and the tip of a tendril withdraws. His fingers close around the hilt. (He refuses to think about the implications.)

“ _Fuck you.”_ Jonah is halfway back on his feet by the time Jon that hurls himself at him, plunging the knife into Jonah's gut.

For a moment, Jonah can’t quite seem to grasp what happened, stares down at the knife in distant disbelief before looking at Jon, and then back down. The hundreds of Eyes flutter against his skin and when he laughs, it’s a mad, twisted thing that rattles Jon’s bones and grates along his spine. There’s a pained wheezing underlying it, and his face has gone taut with pain.

“Really, Archive?—Repeating my mistake?” he jeers, seemingly careless, and in one long, fluid motion, Jonah grasps the knife, pulls it out of his stomach, and slices it through Jon’s face.

Jon feels the red-hot line, feels the abject shock as the knife slices through the side of his face, through his right eye, across the bridge of his nose, before dipping into his left eye as well.

The pain is worse than when Jon shook Jude’s hand, exploding inside his head until he can’t _think_ , can’t _breathe_ , can only _scream_ _—_

“This wasn’t the plan,” Jonah hisses, “but I will have to make do, won’t I…”

—and something _blooms_ inside Jon, even as the numbness settles into the void that was once his heart.

When he **blinks** , he hears Jonah _gasp,_ and himself scream.

The world assembles itself like a kaleidoscope, compiled from a thousand slightly offset angles. Jon feels how his ruined eyes slowly start to reknit, and the pain is _worse,_ but when he smiles, his teeth are bloody and his grimace is impossibly wide, impossibly empty, impossibly lost.

From far away, he hears Jonah’s laugh, until it turns into shallow gasps and bloody wheezes.

“I thought it would be worse b-but—seeing you _Become_ _—_ holds its own—exquisite—p-pain—my—A-Archive…y-you—should’ve—stayed—a-away… then…Martin might’ve—lived—” He laughs one last time, and his grin widens when Jon’s impossible gaze finds him. (There’s something touching Jon’s ankle, slowly wrapping itself around. Jon notices it faintly, as though it were happening to someone else.)

“—Did you t-think…it w-would feel…differently?” Jonah asks between gasps, voice quiet. (Something touches Jon’s other ankle, but he only twitches a bit.) There’s an ugly grin on Jonah’s face but it’s bloodstained and terrible. “Finally g-getting… r-revenge?”

Jon stares at him, and slowly shakes his head. “It makes no difference,” he says monotonously, “but I didn’t do it for me.”

Jonah’s grin widens to an impossible degree. “O-Oh… b-but you’re wrong about—that, my A-Archive,” he whispers, “It m-makes _a-all_ the difference…”

The roots curled around Jon’s ankles pull tight the exact moment that a dozen more slide around his arms, his legs, his neck, drawing tight in an instant, and Jon watches in faint, far-removed terror as the tendrils pull themselves out of Jonah’s skin, swinging around the air as though they’re tasting the air, searching and sensing. 

When they inevitably turn toward him, Jon still draws in a startled breath.

There’s nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. He feels the roots lift him off the ground, until he’s hovering in front and above Jonah.

When the last tendril withdraws from Jonah’s body, it leaves him slumped against the ground. Jon knows that gut wounds kill slowly, but Jonah doesn’t look like he’ll live much longer, abandoned by the Eye.

“Oh m-my, how f-far we’ve—come,” Jonah rasps, “d-dear M-Martin will n-never know what h-his death t-triggered…” The roots turn Jon over the moment Jonah starts laughing, and Jon’s fractured Gaze finally finds Martin.

Martin, who is dead.

Who would still be alive if Jon had left him outside.

Jon’s screams mingle with Jonah’s dying laughter, but true despair only hits him when the first tendril slams into his back.

* * *

Jon isn’t sure when the ground around him starts to crack, when his shaking hands become his shaking body become the shaking tower.

His eyes are tear-stained and his heart filled to overflowing with a despair that goes infinitely beyond, twisting outward like tendrils of ash and smoke and _pain._ He can feel his mind buckling, his blood boiling—

And then, the storm explodes outward, leaving him empty and hollow, and he can _hear_ the cracks echoing through the tower, through the entire world, but he’s the Eye of the Storm, and it leaves him untouched.

And Jon just floats.

He doesn’t know how long he spends like that. Time has no meaning anymore in this new world.

In the end he only resurfaces because pain pulls him back; because he starts to _feel_ the roots slamming into him, followed by dull ache and a rip and a shift, like paper tearing inside him. His vision is disjointed and torn asunder, and every blink carries agonising pain.

One moment, he catches a glimpse of himself in the window’s reflection and sees the vines extending from his back and neck and arms and legs.

He only feels a dull, horrified ache at that, but it’s too dull to count; watches in numbed fascination as the vines anchor themselves in and bond to his body. There is no pain aside from the muted impact, until the very last one slams into the centre of his back and rips the numbness away with infinite cruelty. Jon feels it dig into his back, feels it punch right through his spine and into his heart.

Hears himself scream as if from far away, watches the windows shatter—

Sees the roiling dark sky, the eyes, and Watches as they slowly start to glow, brighter and brighter.

 _They hadn_ _’t glowed before._

When they reach their brightest point, he has to shut his Eyes, and for a moment, all is silent.

When Jon blinks, he _**Sees.** _

* * *

It starts with a trickle—

_Horse pupils were always horizontal to the ground, even when the horse lowered its neck. This made it easier to spot danger._

—one useless, unimportant, _outdated_ fact at a time.

_In South Korea, there was an emergency number to report spies._

He shoves it all aside, and groans.

 _Bullfrogs didn_ _’t sleep—the deepest known point in the former Earth’s seabed was called Challenger Deep at almost 11km—_

The worst thing is, he knew about Challenger Deep already. He hates that he now Knows that it no longer exists as well—

— _Ecstasy was invented the year the Titanic sank—_

And after a while, the trickle widens and turns into a stream—

— _there are over 6,500 languages—the pyramids_ —

—which turns into a river—

— _neutron stars can—trees knew—spin 600 times—at the beginning of the year— per second—whether it would be dry—there was no—or wet and adjust—sound in—their leaf size accordingly— space—_

—and then the ocean.

And after a while, the rage and the pain settle below, quiet and deep and treacherous, and Jon starts to float, Eyes closed.

The knowledge is infinite, but he knows that he can contain it all— _not yet, but soon._

And suddenly he Knows that he could _Find Out How_ if he wanted to; that he could Become and warp the very fabric of reality, do what he and Martin came all the way to the Panopticon for.

There may be fifteen fears, but they’re all connected in him. He is the the linchpin that brought this new world into being, the harbinger. They're here under the Eye's conditions, through him. If he dies, chaos will break loose and the order will fall apart, but it won’t save anyone.

Jon stares down at the tiny part of water that is him—stares at his life and everything he did, at Georgie and Melanie and the Admiral, at Martin and Basira and Daisy. Stares at all the people he doomed, the people he lost, all of those he never knew.

It is his _responsibility_ to Know them all.

To _Save_ them all.

_It will be my death._

—It will be the death of the man known as Jonathan Sims, but not the end of his journey. 

Something will survive, and it won’t be Jon. It will once have been Jon, but it will be beyond mortality. Beyond humanity.

_Beyond everything._

Jon stares down at the ocean, and it isn’t even a choice. He closes his eyes, and he lets himself fall, and as he falls, he screams out his love and his pain and his sorrows, because what else is there? He screams, and lets it all out, and hopes that someone might hear.

* * *

_It starts with_ _**pain,** _ with a million needles burrowing into and through his skin, but larger, hungrier. 

There’s an itch at his back, a million itches, and they’re pushing and prodding, trying to get in.

His body is fighting, but he is waning. The pain makes him scream and he watches through the eyes on his back and at the back of his head as the tendrils slowly thicken where they join his body, congealing, starting to pull him apart. Watches as his skin splits and dark, inky blood pours out, as they absorb his blood and slowly push in. As his skin closes around the wound, as they _grow_ inside him. He can feel the pushing and prodding until he doesn’t, until it’s part of him. Until he can feel how his body has _expanded_ , can feel how this part of him reaches through the tower, _is_ the tower, down to the ground, _through_ the ground, **_everywhere_**.

The further they push in, the more Jon Knows.

And after one tendril has become part of him, it doesn’t take long until the others follow suit, until he’s screaming and screaming and screaming.

After a while, the screams become distant, and then they—

Stop.

_It starts with an_ _**itch** _ _at his neck_ , with his right hand slowly lifting to scratch. His skin feels cracked and dry and rough in a way it shouldn’t. He scratches and a bit breaks off, falls to the ground. When he tries to move he finds that it hurts in a distant, dim way, and why did he want to turn again? It’s much nicer like this, in a pose that doesn’t hurt, that’s infinitely sustainable. Standing, and Watching, isn’t this how he’s always been supposed to be?

He can feel his skin getting rougher, can feel it _harden_ somehow, and it’s nice. It helps him stay in this pose, helps anchor him. He feels the ridges and furrows, and he likes the dryness of it all. Likes how comfortable it grounds him, in a way.

Like a hug. (He pushes the ensuing thoughts away, and tries to bury the ache.)

_It starts with a_ _**tear** _ _in his skin, and with a_ _**blink**_. The new Eye that opens blinks once, glowing a faint green that abates as it watches, but it doesn’t see the Panopticon and the broken, ruined windows crowning its top.

The Eye stares down, and it only sees a huge carousel that’s far bigger than any carousel should ever be.

When there’s another itch, Jon doesn’t raise its hand to scratch, because it doesn’t want to, not anymore. Because it knows that its arm might not bend anymore, because its skin has grown rough and thick, wrapping around it gently, and—

Because it's _curious._

After a while, it doesn’t even really _feel_ the itch anymore; it’s a distant, welcome feeling. It just waits until the itch abates, and then it Blinks—

And Watches as people die and suffer, watches as they get warped beyond understanding in the Avatar’s realms.

There’s a pain in its chest, and it’s rough and hard like wood. 

* * *

At one point, the Witness stops moving.

At one point, all Eyes have opened, and it blinks with all of them, mirrored across its entire, warped realm.

(It Knows that its predecessor didn’t get this far.)

It Gazes down upon its victims for a long time, Knowing that it should find pleasure in their pain. Part of it does. A _big_ part does; almost all of it, in fact. 

Still, there’s one tiny, minuscule part that does not, and it feels nothing but a strange, alien resolution taking hold in its strange, pondering mind.

_Please. Please save them. For him._

The Witness turns that thought over for a while, but it Knows where the resolution came from, and it is a keeper of promises, if nothing else. A keeper of promises, of memories, of thoughts and— _hopes_. _(_ _For him.)_

It takes a deep, creaking breath, and then it _stretches_ , and _pushes,_ and feels itself expand and grow and change and shift, feels branches creak and roots spread. Feels itself warp as the rock that was once its foundation becomes absorbed, shifting from rock to crystal to branch.

It stretches its multitude of arms out and out and out, stretches its roots until they’re _everywhere,_ until they’re everything as well _._

It takes a long time, and it hurts.

The Witness does not hesitate once.

In the end, the Witness becomes infinite, impossible; multitudes. Transcends its name and purpose, stretching its roots through the cracks, until it finds the one between worlds, carefully easing one of its roots through. It Learns and Understands and Knows.

It slowly begins the process of Splitting, of Tearing, and of Creating.

In the end, the Witness tears itself apart, separating the fears from humanity. In the end, it is reborn, splitting itself into two parts; one containing infinity, the past, the present, and the future, and the other staying static and unchanging, forever.

In the end, it creates a world as close to the one all living beings had left behind, an infinity and a second ago, and uses the Web Aspect’s Strings to carefully tug their minds into forgetfulness. It carefully employs the other Aspects to coax their original reality back into existence, and then tugs them back inside itself, both the Aspects but also all beings belonging to them, just like the Aspects belong to the Witness now.

It very carefully removes the Marks the Aspects have left on certain individuals, restores those whose minds got warped.

It stretches its roots out into the world it has made, knowing that it will need to Watch, that it will need to feed the Aspects under its care.

In the end, it watches while the world it has recreated slowly awakens.

It ignores the protests of its Aspects, Knowing that they cannot do anything without its permission.

When the Witness Knows that it has succeeded, it closes its two original eyes, and it sleeps.

* * *

_In the end, the Tree remains._

* * *

There’s a tree at the centre of an empty, forsaken dreamworld, one half-step to the left of reality. Its roots stretch all the way to the centre of that world and the next, and its branches can almost touch the stars.

The Tree can be seen from any point of that barren wasteland, rising into the sky like an omen, a sentinel against the evil things that once lurked in plain sight, hidden impossibly well, now kept safe inside itself.

It watches and contains, and though its suffering is great, it knows that it’s worth it, that it’ll be worth it for the rest of _eternity_.

And thus it perseveres.

* * *

There’s a tree at the centre of London, growing from the cracked ruins of an old building.

Nobody is quite sure what that building once looked like or what was inside it; it looks _centuries_ older than it could possibly be, guessing from its crumbling architectural style and overall location.

Nobody quite knows how old the Tree is either but, guessing from its girth, scientists think that both the tree and the ruin must be over a thousand years old, as impossible as that might seem.

Most people just try to avoid the street these days.

Most people try to swallow down the bittersweet, gentle-sad ache that builds inside their chests when they walk past; try to ignore how they can _feel_ its call.

Most people try to deny that it resonates with a broken part within them, that they’re _connected_ to it on some unfathomable level.

They’ve put up a plaque, naming it the Sentinel Oak. Nobody is quite sure whether it's actually an oak, but for some reason everyone agrees that its name fits.

* * *

There’s a lot of confusion regarding the last few years— _something_ happened, but nobody can quite remember what.

They know that it’s connected to the Sentinel and the warped ruin somehow, but they can’t say how they know.

Most people don’t sleep well at night, but their nightmares fade away into nothingness when they wake up, leaving them with little more than a racing heart and quiet discomfort that fades over the course of the day.

The world is slowly trying to piece itself back together in the wake of _whatever-it-was_ , but progress is slow-going, especially since nobody can quite remember what happened. Artists of all kinds get the closest to capturing that feeling though, and in the wake of The Event the world moves closer together.

Things will go back to normal, one day.

But for now, the gentle, discomforting ache remains.

* * *

These days, most people who seek out the Sentinel are travellers and lost souls. The tree calls to them in a voice they can’t quite place, a voice that resonates with something broken deep inside them, promising gentle relief.

Sometimes people feel the unspoken urge to climb onto its roots, to press their faces against its rough bark, to tell it the secrets and stories that weigh them down.

There’s an aching sadness that clings to its bark, but for some reason talking to it seems to help. It is said that if you hug it, it feels as though the tree is hugging you back; that if you spend the night among its roots, you won’t have any nightmares.

A few painters have tried to paint it and for some reason, a man always seems to crystallise from their strokes, leaning against the tree’s wide trunk, arms spread wide. His face is twisted into an expression of hopeless rage and loss and desperation, but there’s something else there as well. Love?

They say that if you look at it from the right angle at the right time of day, you can almost make out his face.

If there are no people around, one can usually find a dozen of the city’s stray cats curled up among the Sentinel’s knotted roots.

**Author's Note:**

> I exist in semi-serious writer/artist form @siarven on [tumblr](https://siarven.tumblr.com/) / [twitter](https://twitter.com/Siarven) but also have a TMA sideblog [@moth-song-archives](https://moth-song-archives.tumblr.com/) on tumblr :D I really love getting to know people so PLEASE come scream at/with me! 
> 
> I've wanted to write a mean body horror thing ever since I read a ton of mean body horror things on here, but at first I didn't know what I could write that hadn't been done before. When I realised that there was nothing with trees yet it grew a plot, so now it's not just a mean body horror oneshot anymore, it's just very mean in general. oops :D
> 
> I have no idea where TMA's ending is headed so it's not really meant as a prediction fic. I'm sure the actual ending will hurt me worse than writing this did, but the idea just wouldn't let go anymore. :')  
> (I solemnly promise that I'll go back to writing Moth Song now :P)
> 
> If I forgot to tag a trigger, please tell me so I can add it! And if you leave me a kudo/comment, I will probably cry and love you forever :')


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